Jubal's poems

[Ashanorath]

Your poems leave me speachless.

[Jubal]

I find the key is to be speechless myself, one cannot encapsulate emotions truly except at the times you're really feeling them yourself I think.

[Cuddly Khan]

I need more of your awesomeness Jubal, just to tide me over until Andalus gets writing again.

[Jubal]

Sappy emotional crap time, writing a poem addressed to someone with no intention of showing it to them. Woots.

Little Things
Did you know that beauty is about the little things?
It's not the mountains rising in the background,
It's the glint of sunlight on the peak of the highest one
Not the vast redness of the desert,
But the way a pebble almost glows in the mid-day sun

Did you know that beauty is about the little things?
A quantum state of perfect balance
It can't be captured, or analysed, or in any way refined,
Just a miracle in miniature,
Forged between the world and the human mind.

Did you know that beauty is about the little things?
No vast serenities for beauty
Laughs, wry smiles, and wit will call her to flight
On wings of purest shimmering joy
The little things have great and untold might.

Did you know that beauty is about the little things?
Your hair sometimes glints in the sun
When you're happy, your eyes start to shine and glisten and almost dance
Your voice changes a bit when you're saying something funny
The little things, the little things keep me entranced.

[Cuddly Khan]

I really like that one. Really good. You'll reel them in with that.

[Ashanorath]

Jubal, do you have a deviantart accaunt? If not, you should make one and post your poems there so more people can admire them.

[Jubal]

I do, I never quite got on with DA somehow though. Might look into it again sometime.

I'd rather people came here really. 

[Cuddly Khan]

Is it alright if I post a thread on a forum with some of your poems and update it with your new poems?

[Jubal]

Of course, though do link me to it and preferably have the thread link back here as well.

[Cuddly Khan]

OK, will do. Thanks. It's a part of my Exilian recruitment scheme, showing everyone how awesome we (you) are.

EDIT: Thread is here.

[Jubal]

Three poems based on the first world war, produce of this week's residential course:


This is most meant to emulate a classic war poem in the style of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.
Please
Please tell me of riverbanks,
Tell me of hay,
Tell me of sun on a hot july day
Tell me that England is still somewhere near
And the willows still weep into waters so clear.

Please sing me a song now
And tell me of dreams
That somewhere are children
With strawberries and cream
Tell me the names on these endless long lists
Are on there for something that really exists.

Don't talk about mud
Don't talk about guns
Or fathers back home
Who can't bury their sons
Please tell me in this sea of fear, madness, gore
That there's someone can tell me just what it's all for.


This focusses more on the dehumanising element of warfare.
Steel, Ice, Fire
Steel, ice, fire
That has to be the reality
It is not a case of what is,
But a case of what must be,
What to become.

Steel - a hardness
Rigid silver under the cold heat
Of an unforgiving star.
The key, oddly, is not the way
The curiously still pipe points at the other side
But the way it points at you
(Or I, he, she, we, it)
Points into you
Gives you its hardness
For you must become steel.

Ice - a coldness
Around you
(Or us, we, it)
Quivering, stiff fingers
Become numb
Quivering in time and rhythm
Your (its) mind follows.

Fire
Enough to melt the ice? No.
Enough for what, then?
Enough to kill.
Perhaps more than enough
But it doesn't know or care
Not time to be released
To be glad
To be or
Perhaps
Not to be
But there is no question
No answer
It is dead. In the mud.
It. Or... you?


This last has more of a personal element; my great grandfather was responsible for a tracing department in WWI - he oversaw the copying of all the maps used by British forces in Europe.
The Map Maker
Transparent in the half-light
Underneath, a world appears
Contours, villages, and streams
Rivers, forests, lakes and meres.

Tracing over line by line
A trench, a field, a winter flood
He settles back, then English camps
Appear in inks as red as blood.

Neatly, eyes sharp, hand poised, still
The maps are drawn to show the way
That men will stumble, shaking, blind
Upon some muddy autumn day

At last the man lays down his pens
His night's work done, with one slow breath
He thinks of men fighting for the world he has drawn
And shivers a little to think of their death

[kaleidoscopicmind]

I got all excited when I saw the update What can we write with if not experience and emotions? They are pen and paper to all literature. Great new stuff

[Jubal]

Lindisfarne
This is really a set of song lyrics, so it's an odd scheme for a poem admittedly.

Sing hey, ho
Rolling down the sea along to Lindisfarne
I'm going to take some gold back home to my love
Who waits for me on the shore.
And it's hey, ho
And the wind blows southward bound

The wind blows southward bound, my boys,
Oh, the wind blows southward bound.
The wind's the huntsman at our back
And we are its hunting hound.
We've a hundred miles of sea behind
And a hundred miles before
So sing hey-ho and haul the sails
'til we land on an English shore.

Sing hey, ho
Rolling down the sea along to Lindisfarne
I'm going to take some gold back home to my love
Who waits for me on the shore.
And it's hey, ho
And the wind blows southward bound

The south wind sets us free, my boys,
The south wind sets us free
We'll find rings of gold and sword of steel
And new lands o'er the sea.
No care for church, no care for king
As the threads of fate are spun
We'll sing hey-ho and take our fill
And sail home with the setting sun.

Sing hey, ho
Rolling down the sea along to Lindisfarne
I'm going to take some gold back home to my love
Who waits for me on the shore.
And it's hey, ho...
Sing hey, ho
Rolling down the sea along to Lindisfarne
I'm going to take some gold back home to my love
Who waits for me on the shore.
And it's hey, ho
And the wind blows southward bound,
Yes, the wind blows southward bound,
The wind blows southward bound!
And the wind blows...

[Jubal]

Snowball: Cambridge
I
Am
Not
Here
To see
All the
Things I
Could e'er
Know or the
Knowledge I
Can never e'en
Know it but I am
Here to find out
I am discovering
What knowledge is.

[comrade_general]

What is it?